


And Then There Were Two

by Arch_ie



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Battle Buddies, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Fake AH Crew, M/M, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, smoke inhalation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 00:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11863221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arch_ie/pseuds/Arch_ie
Summary: Before they were The Vagabond and Rimmy Tim, they were the Battle Buddies.Before they were part of the Fake AH Crew, they were part of a top-secret military operation.When the agency fell, they went their separate ways and buried the past in the past.Somehow, they gravitated back towards each other anyway.





	And Then There Were Two

Before they were The Vagabond and Rimmy Tim, they were the Battle Buddies. Before they were part of the Fake AH Crew, they were part of a top-secret military operation in which they were Associates of Assault, hired – for the most part – to take out any threats to the nation. They did the occasional bomb defusal, but they were usually hired for their stealth and ability to take down entire organisations in the span of a single night. Of course, they weren’t _exactly_ as stealthy as they made their superiors believe, but they never left anyone alive to tell them any different, so there was really no harm in a little exaggeration.

They were the perfect team, Agents Ryan Haywood and Jeremy Dooley. One of the highest-ranking teams in the whole agency, not that you’d be able to tell with the kind of work they were given near the end. Maybe their superiors saw something coming, saw how bloodthirsty they were becoming. Maybe they were trying to give them a break, give them time to cool down, detach themselves from their work. Maybe they thought all the work was catching up to them, that they were developing some form of PTSD. The project had had their fair share of agents who needed to drop out due to mental health reasons, after all, despite only having agents in active duty for half a decade. It was gruelling and grisly work.

Unfortunately for them, that was not the case for the Battle Buddies, and weaning them out of active duty, making them run more and more simulations and bomb defusal missions rather than what they were trained – no, _made_ – for was their downfall.

They never saw it coming.

The Battle Buddies had been talking about it, planning it, for months, since they had first started getting pulled from active missions. There was the fact that the agency was corrupt, making them murder people for reasons that went against their (admittedly skewed) moral compasses. That wasn’t all there was to it, though. In truth, they had both always been bloodthirsty, though it never really came to light until they joined the agency. When the agency started restricting them, keeping them on a short leash, well, the Battle Buddies didn’t react well to that, especially not with their conflicting ideologies.

Jeremy was, surprisingly, the one to bring up the idea. Ryan was, of course, the one to plan it out. They didn’t need to prepare, not really, because they knew they would have the element of surprise, and they knew they had the training to pull it off.

It was surprisingly easy.

The hard part was overriding the alarms, but the agency never expected this from their own men, so it was fairly easy to get into the security room in order to tamper with the alarm system. All it took was Jeremy talking up the security guards and techs while Ryan slipped into the background, working quickly and quietly.

They had access to the agency’s main weapons supply, so that was the easiest part. It was as simple as swiping their cards and grabbing whatever weapons they wanted. Ryan had picked out the most effective weapons for each of them weeks in advance, so it didn’t take long for them to gather what they needed and get out.

They started with those in the lower ranks. Techs and trainees were the first to go. Low ranking teams and security guards were next. The mid ranking teams came after that, and while they proved to be some difficulty to get through, it wasn’t particularly hard. Next were the higher-ranking teams, those on the same level as the Battle Buddies. They had had time to figure out what was going on and prepare by that point, so they proved to be much more difficult than the others, but were ultimately no match for the Battle Buddies.

By the time the Battle Buddies made it to their superiors, both had obtained some injuries. Both had taken gunshots to their torso, but their body armor was able to save them from any serious damage. Ryan had a gash on his forehead, a broken nose, and a graze from a bullet on his thigh. Jeremy had a broken hand and a bullet imbedded his upper arm – luckily both injuries were on the same side, so he still had one perfectly functional arm, and that was all he needed.

Their superiors weren’t really trained for this sort of thing. They were in charge, but few of them were actually trained in combat. Even fewer had actually been out in the field. They barked orders and acted high and mighty, but they weren’t as powerful as they made themselves seem, and the Battle Buddies had had enough.

They proved easy to take out, and their deaths marked the end of the Battle Buddies’ time with the agency. There was no one from the agency left alive.

They walked out side-by-side.

Neither returned to their shared apartment, instead getting into separate cars filled with their possessions and driving away.

Neither looked back.

Neither looked for the other.

Somehow, they gravitated back towards each other anyway.

Ryan joined the Fakes first, having made a name for himself in Los Santos as The Vagabond. He wore a skull mask and leather and dark jeans that were so very different from his gear at the agency. They didn’t know about his past, but after almost a year of working with them he revealed his name and face. No one looked into his past, out of respect. They had been working with him for long enough to trust him with their lives, and had no reason to go behind his back to find out his history. They trusted that he would tell them in his own time.

Three years after Ryan joined the FAHC, a man who went by the moniker Rimmy Tim joined the B-Team. He had an atrocious signature colour scheme of purple, orange, and yellow that made up what seemed like his entire wardrobe, and he wore purple and orange face paint – one colour covering each side of his face, split down the middle. Ryan didn’t think anything of him, even after he learned his name was Jeremy. Rimmy Tim was two inches taller than his Jeremy, after all.

One year after that, Rimmy Tim – Ryan couldn’t bring himself to call him Jeremy – joined the main crew. Ryan fell back into wearing his mask full time, not yet trusting the shorter man. The other crew members rolled their eyes at him, but never said anything. It was up to him to decide when he trusted Rimmy Tim enough to show him his true identity. They even started calling him Vagabond again when Rimmy Tim was around.

Rimmy Tim was never without his face paint, anyway, so it’s not like Ryan was the only one hiding behind a mask – whether literally or metaphorically.

Ryan couldn’t shake the feeling that Rimmy Tim’s voice was familiar, and every time he heard it he was struck with a momentary cold shock, but he refused to believe what he subconscious was telling him. He didn’t know Rimmy Tim was experiencing the same thing, not until a few months later.

It was a deal gone wrong, and the warehouse Rimmy Tim was in was suddenly filled with smoke from multiple smoke bombs. Ryan had been standing guard outside, and while he still might not have trusted the other man completely yet, he was a part of the crew, and Ryan refused to leave one of his own behind. He didn’t care about the money they would be losing – though he knew Geoff wouldn’t be happy – his priority was getting Rimmy Tim out before he suffocated.

He ran into the warehouse and was instantly blinded by the smoke that stung his eyes and throat, but he forced himself to keep moving. He had luckily memorised the layout of the warehouse a few days before the deal, and was able to stumble towards the place Jeremy would have been when the bombs went off.

Not even halfway there, he started choking, smoke getting trapped in his mask, and had to pull it off to avoid suffocating. He called out for Jeremy, and was met with a hoarse cry of his name. It didn’t hit him immediately that Jeremy had called out _Ryan_ and not Vagabond, and that he himself had called out _Jeremy_ and not Rimmy. It was the first time they had said each other’s name since their time with the agency, but that realisation wouldn’t sink in for a while yet.

Their shouts led them to each other, and Ryan grabbed onto Jeremy, holding him tight as the other man stumbled, having inhaled more smoke than Ryan at that point. Ryan was surprised the other man was even conscious, honestly, but he didn’t have time to dwell on that, because if they were in the smoke any longer, one – if not both – of them would die. Even if they made it out one of them could still die from the smoke and fumes they’d inhaled, so it was important to get out as soon as possible. At least Ryan had had the foresight to dial Geoff and drop his still ringing phone outside the warehouse before running in.

Ryan was able to drag both of them out and a fair distance away before he collapsed, Jeremy hitting the ground beside him, having been unable to hold himself up on his own for most of the walk out of the warehouse. They both lay on the ground coughing, unable to do anything else, their minds and bodies screaming for relief from the toxic substances that were in their lungs and burning their eyes.

What felt like hours later, but couldn’t have been more than five minutes, they heard cars pull up and voices shouting their names. Neither were able to answer, but they were sat up and had liquid poured over their faces that brought some relief to their burning eyes before masks were being shoved over their mouths and they were breathing in pure oxygen.

Ryan blinked and was able to catch a glimpse of Larry, their medic, ordering other crew members to do things, but had to screw his burning eyes closed again too soon to catch a glimpse of anything else.

For a while, all he most of what he could hear was muffled noises and a high-pitched ringing in his ears, then his blood pounding, then his hearing cleared enough for him to hear Larry telling someone to grab him and Jeremy and put them in a car to take them back to the base, where he could treat them better.

He heard a soothing voice in his ear – Geoff, he realized with a shock – and let the older man ease him to his feet and guide him to a car, where he was deposited gently in a cool leather seat. He kept his eyes closed, unwilling to deal with the inevitable burning and the brightness of day, not when he had a pounding headache and wished for nothing more than some painkillers, or a sedative, or _anything_ to make it stop. Ryan had been shot and tortured and had had all kinds of horrible things happen to him many times, but this was one of the worst things he had ever experienced. Or, at least, it felt like that in the moment.

He felt someone slide into the seat next to him, and from the voices and breathing sounds he could hear he could only assume it was Jeremy.

By the time he felt the car jolt into motion, his breathing had evened out, but he didn’t dare take off the oxygen mask, not when it was brining such relief to his burning lungs. His throat was dry and raw, but he could deal with that once they were back at the base and Larry was able to look him over and provide proper medical care.

He must have drifted off at some point, because next thing he knew he was lying on a soft surface and could feel something taped to the back of his hands. He blinked his eyes open, and found the room he was in was dark, which was a relief. His eyes were no longer burning, and his lungs felt much better, though his throat still felt dry. He coughed a bit, blinking some more and looking around the room. It was one of Larry medical rooms back at their base, he realised, and while he was still wearing his shirt and jeans from earlier, his boots had been pulled off, as well as his belt and his jacket. A quick glance around the room found the items sitting atop a small chair in the corner.

There was an oxygen tube in his nose, and there was an IV attached to the back of each of his hands, which explained what he had felt taped to them. He turned his head to glance at the IV pole next to him and saw that he seemed to be being fed a saline solution, and was also attached to drips of two medications he had never heard of. He didn’t dwell on it, though, because Larry had patched him up enough times for him to trust him, and he was feeling much better than he was earlier.

He coughed again, and glanced around the room, hoping to spot a glass of water, but found nothing. He did, however, find a call button placed conveniently near his right hand, and pressed it with shaky fingers.

Larry was in the room seconds after Ryan had pressed it, smiling in a way that could only be described as ‘shifty,’ but Ryan had known him long enough by that point to know that was just the way his face was most of the time.

“How’re you feeling?” Larry asked, making his way into the room and checking his medication bags, squeezing them and pressing some buttons on the equipment keeping the medication flowing to his veins.

Ryan gestured vaguely to his throat just before his was hit by another coughing fit, and Larry nodded in sympathy, “I’ll have someone bring you some milk in a second,” He said, and rolled his eyes when Ryan pulled a face, moving forward and pressing some buttons on the bed so Ryan was in more of a sitting position, “Don’t look at me like that, it’ll soothe your throat. I’ll even add some honey in it for you.”

With that, Larry was gone, and Ryan was left alone again. Not for long, though, it seemed, because what felt like seconds later Jack was slipping in. She gently closed the door behind her before making her way to Ryan’s bedside.

“Larry told me you needed some milk,” She said before she pressed the mug she held to his lips, ignoring his hands when they reached for it, “It’s kind of lukewarm, because Larry doesn’t want you drinking anything cold right now, but we also don’t want you burning your throat drinking something hot.”

Ryan reached out again to try and take hold of the mug again, but Jack just fixed him with a glare, “Your hands are shaking violently, Ryan. Just let me help you before I pour this on you.”

Ryan let out a huff of breath out through his nose, but parted his lips and allowed Jack to tip some of the milk into his mouth and down his throat. Larry was right, and it really did help soothe his throat, and Ryan made a mental note to thank him later. It was always best to thank your medic in this line of work, after all, because they’re the ones with your life in their hands, and medics in this line of work weren’t always the kindest. Ryan didn’t _think_ Larry would kill him or let him die by denying medical care, but he wouldn’t put him past him. Better safe than sorry, or whatever it is that people say.

“Thanks,” Ryan croaked out once he had drunk about a quarter of the milk and Jack pulled it away from him, setting it down on the small table next to him.

“Sorry I can’t give you more,” Jack said, giving him a sympathetic smile – it seemed like he would be getting a lot of those, “Larry told me to have you drink it slowly so you don’t get sick.” It made sense, but Ryan still wished he could have some more.

He cleared his throat a couple times before glancing back up at Jack, who was standing there patiently, looking as though she was waiting for him to say something. He hated how knowing she was, sometimes.

“Jeremy?” He asked, unable to force anything more out, but Jack understood what he meant. She had probably been expecting it, really.

“He’s fine, thanks to you,” Jack said, “He woke up about half an hour before you, but that’s not surprising since you get such little sleep normally. Larry said the same thing as he always does when you get hurt – your body needs more time to heal than it would if you actually got a decent amount of sleep.”

Ryan knew Jack wasn’t happy about his sleeping habits – the whole crew, bar Jeremy, had no trouble hounding him about it constantly. None of them liked how little sleep he got, even going as far as getting a hold of some sedatives for him, but he refused to acknowledge their concerns. He got enough sleep to do his job effectively, and that’s all that really mattered.

“You’ll both have to stay here for a while – Larry isn’t sure what exact chemicals were in those bombs, and some chemicals commonly used in smoke bombs can have delayed effects, so he needs to be able to monitor you.” Jack continued, and Ryan nodded in understanding.

Jack’s face suddenly dropped, and though she was obviously trying to hide her emotions, he could see the sadness bleeding through, “We were all really worried, you know,” She began, “About both of you. We almost lost you,” Her voice broke a bit, but she recovered quickly, “But… You didn’t have to go in there for Jeremy. I know you don’t really fully trust him, and you don’t really talk to him much, but I know we all really appreciate it. Including him.”

“He’s one of us,” Ryan says, his voice hoarse, and Jack smiles again, though there’s still some sadness hidden in it, “I don’t leave crew members behind.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, then cleared her throat, and the sadness disappeared, “Geoff’s with Jeremy right now, but he’ll probably come to see you once I leave. Michael and Gavin are up in the penthouse – Larry wants you two resting for now, and lord knows how rowdy the two of them are.” Ryan cracked a smile, and Jack continued, “Jeremy wants to see you, too. Pretty badly, honestly. I understand if you don’t want to,” She gestured to his face, “But he’s kind of working himself up about it, so…”

“He can see me,” Ryan says slowly, and Jack nods, an emotion Ryan can’t quite place flashing across her face.

“I’ll have Geoff bring him in in a minute, then,” Jack says, giving him one final nod before breezing out of the room, and Ryan lets out a sigh, looking longingly at the mug on the table next to him, wishing Jack have given him some more milk before leaving.

He debated just grabbing the mug himself, his shaking hands be damned, but when he had finally made the decision to do it, he heard the sound of wheels squeaking outside his door. He barely had a moment to prepare himself before Jeremy was wheeled into the room, Geoff pushing him with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Good to see you awake, buddy,” Geoff says, backing up once Jeremy had been maneuvered next to his bed, “Just shout if you need me.” With that he slips out, closing the door quickly behind him, and Ryan frowns, turning to Jeremy and—

Ryan freezes, because that’s _Jeremy_. _His_ Jeremy. Jeremy Dooley. His Battle Buddy.

Suddenly, everything hits him at once, and he feels like an absolute idiot, because the signs were all there. Sure, there was the height thing, and the face paint thing, but Rimmy acted just like Jeremy, and his voice had always sounded familiar, and—

God, Jeremy had cried out his name in the warehouse.

Ryan had cried out Jeremy’s name in the warehouse, too.

“I’m an idiot,” Ryan croaks out, and Jeremy grins at him, and Ryan realizes his hair is purple and orange and lets out a choked laugh. He wonders when he did that, since he had been wearing his signature hat the whole day, and it definitely wasn’t like that last week.

“Yeah, you are,” Jeremy says, and his voice is just as hoarse as Ryan’s, “I am too, though, so I guess it’s okay. We can be idiots together.”

“Idiot Buddies,” Ryan says as an attempt at a joke, and Jeremy _laughs_ and it’s the best thing Ryan’s heard in years.

“God, I’ve missed you,” Jeremy says, and his eyes are watery now, but so are Ryan’s, so he can’t really say anything.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Ryan says, smiling softly at Jeremy, and the younger man returns it with a soft smile of his own.

“Why did we ever split up?” Jeremy asks, and Ryan doesn’t have an answer, but it doesn’t seem like Jeremy is really looking for one.

Ryan hesitantly holds out a hand, and Jeremy takes it with one of his just as hesitantly, and Ryan clutches it tightly, careful of the IV the 0ther man has. Jeremy squeezes his hand gently, and they sit there for a few minutes in silence, reassured by the pressure of each other’s hands.

“I can’t believe I almost lost you,” Ryan whispers, “Before I even realized it was _you_. Before I even let you see that I was… me.”

“I’m here,” Jeremy whispers back, staring down at their hands, “Because of you, I’m here. You saved my life.”

“You’re part of the crew,” Ryan says simply, because that’s the easiest answer.

“I know,” Jeremy replies, his voice small, “I just… didn’t think you liked me. I thought I was going to die in there. Then I heard _your_ voice and I just… I didn’t think it was real, but it was.”

Ryan feels choked up suddenly, and clears his throat, trying to keep his emotions out of his voice but ultimately failing, “I didn’t like you,” Ryan says, and Jeremy subtly flinches, but Ryan sees it, because he knows Jeremy too well to miss it, even after all these years, “Because you were named Jeremy, and _you_ were named Jeremy, and I just… You sounded so familiar, and I hated it, because I didn’t think it was _you_ and… I missed you.”

Jeremy’s mouth twitches slightly, the younger man holding back a small, “I didn’t like you either, really. For the same reasons. S’why I avoided you so much.”

They’re silent for a moment before Ryan shifts to the side of his bed farthest from Jeremy and gathers his wires, “Come here.” He says quietly, and he wishes he wasn’t hooked up to a heart monitor, because Jeremy can _see_ how nervous he is, but the other man doesn’t comment on his increased heart rate, just grins and gathers his own wires before carefully maneuvering himself into Ryan’s bed.

It’s too small, and they end up with Ryan basically spooning Jeremy, but it’s nice, and Ryan’s hit suddenly by how much he’s really missed the other man, and gently presses a kiss to the back of his head, ignoring the chemical smell lingering in his hair.

“I love you,” Ryan whispers, and his heart is beating so fast that the heart monitor beeps, signaling his heart rate is getting to high, but no one comes in to check on him, and Jeremy still doesn’t comment on it.

“I know,” Jeremy says, and Ryan feels his heart plummet, but then Jeremy whispers, “I love you, too.”

Ryan grins, and he knows without even looking that Jeremy is smiling, too, and he wonders why they didn’t say it sooner, why they didn’t get together sooner. He thinks it could have saved them a lot of heartache, but that’s not what he asks Jeremy. What he asks Jeremy is something completely different.

“So, how is Rimmy Tim 5’6” when you’re 5’4”? Do you wear lifts?” Ryan asks, his voice teasing, falling back into old habits, and Jeremy rolls around, tangling his wires, to slap his arm.

“You fucking asshole,” Jeremy snaps, but there’s no real heat behind it, and he’s obviously holding back a laugh, “You ruined the moment.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this at 4am the other night and even though I’ve edited it many times I’m still really worried about mistakes so please let me know what you thought and if you found any mistakes!
> 
> To clear some things up:  
> • There’s more to the agency massacre than shown in the story, in terms of the reasons why they did it. I didn’t want that to be the main focus of the story, though, so I gave a shorter rundown.  
> • There were about 2 years in between the Battle Buddies splitting up and Ryan joining the FAHC, meaning there were about 5 years where Jeremy and Ryan were apart.  
> • The main reason that Ryan didn’t recognize Jeremy was the height difference, but I’ve also found that faces and voices tend to distort a bit in your mind as time passes, so while Ryan recognized Jeremy when his face was clean, it didn’t click while it was covered with paint.  
> • They couldn’t quite place each other’s voices because, again, things tend to distort in your mind over time, and they never said anything that really made things click in either of their brains. When Ryan called out Jeremy’s name, Jeremy finally made the connection. Ryan is more oblivious than Jeremy.  
> • Jeremy told Geoff while in the infirmary that he and Ryan used to work together and that they were idiots that hadn’t recognized each other through their masks. He didn’t tell him any details about their past.  
> • I couldn’t find solid info on smoke bomb inhalation so I just kind of mashed together what info I did find and made things purposely vague.  
> • Ryan had two IVs because generally IVs are only able to be attached to two fluids at once (in my experience) and also some medications just shouldn’t be mixed, so one IV had a medication drip + saline solution, and the other was just attached the other medication drip.  
> • Larry came in and interrupted their moment pretty soon after the story ended, dragging Jeremy back to his room so he could hook him back up to his monitors and make sure he didn’t die.
> 
> I might write a short sequel detailing how the crew reacts to finding out about their past but I’m not sure yet?


End file.
